The game of solitaire has provided entertainment and relaxation for multitudes of individuals when played either manually as a game with a deck of cards or as a video game. The video game of solitaire is typically played by manipulating images of cards displayed for example on a personal computer, a tablet computer, a personal digital assistant or a smartphone.
The popularity of each of the card game and the video game is arguably supported by the one-on-one interaction that individuals have with either the cards directly or with an image of the cards on a video screen of the personal computer. People do not usually compete with other people in solitaire, but work individually with a particular hand of cards to achieve a desired result. Typically, the most sought after result is to turn over all of the cards and arrange the cards in order of color and rank. To accomplish this task is to win the game. Alternatively, for example in another type of solitaire game, the winner must turn up and remove all cards from a tableau. Removal of cards is based upon rules specific for each solitaire game.
Solitaire generally requires both luck and skill. To win a game of one type of solitaire (Klondike solitaire), a player must turn over all cards of a deck and must order the cards according to rank and color in order to then move the cards to rank-ordered “foundation” piles or stacks provided for each suit. The game is won when all cards have been moved to the foundation stacks.
For a conventional video solitaire game, a computer randomly orders the cards according to a conventional random card shuffling algorithm. This type of video solitaire game typically does not include an adjustment for a player's level of skill in playing the game of solitaire. For the manual card game of solitaire, the shuffling of each hand of cards randomizes the order of the cards in the deck.
A manual solitaire game developed by Richard Canfield in the early 20th century included steps of buying a deck of cards for fifty dollars and playing a game of Canfield solitaire. The player received five dollars for each card placed on the foundation stacks at the end of the game. The game is more particularly described in Hoyle's Rules and Games, edited by Albert Moorehead and Geoffrey Mott-Smith, published in 1946. Canfield's game does not appear at present be played in its originally-played form on a modern casino floor, perhaps because of the difficulty and costs associated with administering the game in this form.
With the advent of electronic and networked gaming systems (including Internet gaming systems), it would be more efficient to administer the game of solitaire in an electronic form. However, the complexities of play (including the number of possible outcomes from player moves during a game as contrasted to “single-outcome games” such as video slot machines), have heretofore made it difficult to adequately model such a game in order to set buy-in and pay-out prices, and to demonstrate to casino regulators with particularity that casino operators' advantage in the game and likely hold percentages of the pay-in amounts will fall within acceptable limits.